One Tessellation a Day, for 30 Days! Ya, right.

I thought maybe it would be a cool idea to challenge myself to do a tessellation a day for 30 days. Maybe in a few decades when my teacup is not overflowing.

I must point out the difference between a tessellation and a pattern, as in cloth, tiles or wallpaper. They both use the same symmetry rules for filling space. But in the case of tessellations, your aim is to reduce negative space, empty areas, to zero. Where every single square inch is used up by a recognizable figure.

It would be a challenge for me to sketch a tessellation a day, for 30 days. Definitely not a final drawing for sure. The process from start to finished print takes 30-40 hours. About the same amount of time as carving a mask!

• Choosing and sketching a topic, in this case a biker

Mountain Biker In Halliburton Forest, Dog Lake Trail, 1999 F.Champagne http://www.tessellations.ca

• Sometimes restarting in another symmetry group to attain better nesting

Mountain Biker Tessellation ©2017 F.Champagne http://www.tessellations.ca

• Fiddling around in your sketch to resolve limb placement (99% of my drawings involve creatures)

Mountain Biker Tessellation ©2017 F.Champagne http://www.tessellations.ca

• Arriving at a satisfying design, I will overlay an odd colour series of lines, the main outline of the tessellation and the major internal limb and clothing lines

Mountain Biker Tessellation ©2017 F.Champagne http://www.tessellations.ca

• I will then transfer the drawing to a text editor, KaleidoPaint’s file format is a series of commands; lines with their location on the canvas, and either corner or curved nodes, colour, thickness; instructions for the colour fill; and the symmetry system used.
• By removing all the underlying false starts, line segments and fills from my sketch, I am left with a small number of line segments that delineate the tessellation and its internal components.

Mountain Biker Tessellation ©2017 F.Champagne http://www.tessellations.ca

• This is where the tweaking, interminable area give and take occurs,
• And finally arriving at another final design. Much work, definitely worth it.
• A fat tire Pedego Trail Tracker, the Blue Buddha. What a blast!

Mountain Biker Tessellation ©2017 F.Champagne http://www.tessellations.ca